Ripley, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2021 Review: This “old mill overlooking the river and weir” – part of the Darley Abbey Mills World Heritage site on the Derwent – has an “interesting menu and consistently high-quality cooking”. “Lunch here is always a pleasure, thanks to its setting, space and service as much as its food”.

2023 Review: With its untreated oak tables, black granite surfaces and antler candelabras, chef-patron Nick Gillespie’s unusual and “very quiet” venue makes an appropriate showcase for his distinctive modern British cooking, which provided some reporters’ best meal of the year. “Staff cannot do enough for you.”

“Pleasant old pub, with a modern dining room at the rear, in the Derbyshire countryside near Ashbourne”. “Very competent” cooking emerges from the kitchen of chef Gareth Ward, “including top-class fish (from the same source as sister establishment The Cow at Dalbury) – not often do you find both turbot and halibut on offer alongside good-quality local beef and lamb”.

Exceptional ratings were the norm this year in feedback on Alex Bond’s well-established foodie destination: “a beautiful, cavernous, low-lit” space occupying the Victorian brick-vaulted space that was once the coach house on the Park Estate. It’s “not cheap” of course, but provides a “brilliant night out” for which you can choose between a three-course à la carte menu at £75 per person or a seven-course tasting menu at £130 per person: “unusual flavours” but “fabulous food, and with the right level of interaction from staff”.

2022 Review: A “long-standing favourite”, this “brisk and friendly” red-brick late-Victorian boozer serves a “splendid range of beers” and a solid food menu[e]. One great fan and regular, though, feels “the dining room feels utilitarian and a little underwhelming compared to the bar”.

2021 Review: “Really pleasing food”, “very good service” and a “lovely location” have earned plaudits over many years from the locals for Robin Hunter’s Derby Dales village gastropub, which has recently added the Church Lane Deli to its attractions.

“Always a real treat to visit” – this well-established local institution is to be found near the castle in the atmospheric surrounds of the seventeenth century Newdigate House (also home to networking haunt the Nottingham Club), and – especially in summer when its terrace comes into its own – provides “a calm escape from the city streets”. Its rather ambitious food has proved “consistently good” over many years (and even “fabulous” on a good night) and reports this year suggest that it has attained a more consistent standard of late.

Sat & Amanda Bains’s converted motel sits on the fringes of the city, down a lane by the Trent amidst railway flyovers, electricity pylons and a small industrial estate. It’s not the lead-up you would expect to one of the nine restaurants outside of London with two Michelin stars. For an evening meal, choose either ten courses for £199 per person; or 15 for £275 per person; or, you can now book a shorter three-course experience at £145 per person in the Tasting Room or at The Kitchen Bench, rather than in the main dining room. Feedback here is overwhelmingly positive, accrediting the experience as “very inventive…”, “top-notch” and “with charming service front and back of house”. But while gripes about the prices are surprisingly few, the same could also be said about the number of diners reporting this as their best meal of the year, even while it is almost universally hailed as “exceptional all round”.

This “old manor house” handy for Chatsworth (and “not to be confused with the Peacock Inn in nearby Bakewell”), may “feel old-fashioned”, but its “great food and interesting menu” (from tasting menus to more “relaxed” options, both taken in the “fine dining room”) make it “a pleasure” by all accounts. Local ingredients (beef and lamb, say) are sourced from the Haddon Estate on which it sits.

2022 Review: This “lovely gastropub” on the Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth estate gets mostly positive feedback for its “good food and real ales”. There’s sometimes a perception, though, that “it falls short” of its potential: “the cooking was fair, but it could be so nice here”.

“An encouraging addition to the Nottingham restaurant scene” launched in 2022 in a canal-side location in the burgeoning Island Quarter. Launch chef Laurence Henry moved on in November 2023, and it is currently helmed by Himalayan-born chef Hira – a “smart venue with open kitchen” that turns out “well-executed and clever” (should that be cleaver?) food with “thankfully not a tasting menu in sight” – instead, a newly launched fixed evening menu (two courses £45/three courses £53) mirroring the format of lunch.